


ripping out the seams

by Hymn



Series: Hymn's Fic: The Mandalorian Collection [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Disgrunted Pining, F/M, OR IS IT, One-Sided Attraction, Pre-Relationship, spoilers through s01ep04, tho the child sleeps through this one lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21679798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: Cara hitches her pack up higher on her shoulder, runs a grimy hand through equally grimy hair, and grunts at the Vorzydiak food vendor: “Hey. Seen a guy in a stupid looking helmet come through here recently?” That seems a little unfair, and also not nearly descriptive enough after a second’s thought. Cara amends her statement: “He’s got a dumb cape, a big gun, and a green kid, too.”There. That’s better.Cara Dune and the Mandalorian reunite.
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian)
Series: Hymn's Fic: The Mandalorian Collection [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561399
Comments: 32
Kudos: 411





	ripping out the seams

**Author's Note:**

> hello again. thank you kindly for all the feedback and enthusiasm on dangerous attachments, that was amazing! this seems a paltry addition to be offering, but it's all i got lol. i call it "the one with ALL THE TALKING." i still know nothing about anything in this fandom, but thanks to wookieepedia for all the assists, and also thanks to laura, without whom this fic and its predecessor would not exist. title this time from the song lost, sung by liza anne. thanks for reading.

  
  
  
  
Cara hitches her pack up higher on her shoulder, runs a grimy hand through equally grimy hair, and grunts at the Vorzydiak food vendor: “Hey. Seen a guy in a stupid looking helmet come through here recently?” That seems a little unfair, and also not nearly descriptive enough after a second’s thought. Cara amends her statement: “He’s got a dumb cape, a big gun, and a green kid, too.”

There. That’s better.

At the start of her journey, Cara had convinced herself that it’d be best to keep her distance, to pick off bounty hunters and ruffians alike from the shadows, silent and efficient, before the Mandalorian and his boy even knew danger was near. But now, after three different systems, an unregistered dwarf planet nestled amidst space debris that boasted the single, most bloodthirsty family in existence, and two outlaw-infested space stations, she’s decided it’s better to put the two of them on a damned _leash_.

The tracking fob is blinking excitedly in her hand, so Cara figures they have to be nearby. A reunion finally seems imminent on Vorzyd V. Cara’s planning on hauling both of them onto whatever hunk of junk ship the Mandalorian flies and keeping them in orbit until she’s finally managed to catch up on all the sleep she’s been missing.

The Vorzydiak’s antennae twitch, squinting judgmentally at Cara.

“Don’t act like you don’t speak Basic,” Cara groans.

All she wants is to find them already. She’s afraid that if it takes too long she’ll forget why she started; the memories will fade, soft and pleasant, but wholly irrelevant. What will be left in the forefront is what’s always left: the cold dark, the waiting fear, the sickening betrayal. All the reasons Cara has to turn her back and walk away. 

If she had anywhere else to be in this whole sorry galaxy, literally _anywhere else_ , then she’s honestly not sure she’d still be on their trail. Cara’s not a quitter, exactly; she just doesn’t have very many fucks left to give. So the last thing she needs now is to waste time asking after them, haggling for information.

Unfortunately, the squinting only gets more judgemental, the silence more pointed.

Cara mutters a curse, but reaches for her belt pouch anyway.

\---

An exorbitant amount of credits later, Cara has a share of patot panak in hand and a destination: Grath’s Cantina. Each step down the industrial-gray, fairly quiet streets of the Vorzydiak open market has the red light in her palm picking up the pace; her heart follows suit, or tries. It sort of lurches in her chest, rusty and out of practice, but keen to limp along regardless.

Somehow, she’s not surprised when she finally arrives and there’s already a fight in progress.

It’s the work of a mere moment for Cara to take in the scene: three offworlders are huddled behind a tipped over, half-melted table just out of range of the cantina’s exit, their shitty blasters firing a rapid retort over the edge as they aim blindly, without skill, at where their opponent takes similar cover across the room.

It’s not the Mandalorian.

“Huh,” Cara let’s drop, surprised. 

It’s the only sound in the whole place that isn’t creative cursing and blaster fire. It draws attention. Faces, most of them greenish-yellow, peek out from wherever they’re hiding to peer at her. The three offworlders stare at her with gaping mouths, blasters gone quiet. 

Cara knows how she looks: big and solid and cranky. Still, she doesn’t usually garner _this_ much of a reaction, not since she retired from the Shock Troopers. She can’t help but enjoy it, just a little. Lets her pack drop with a clanking impact on the ground at her booted feet, shifts her weight deliberately, and flicks the safety strap off her hip holster with her thumb, hand at the ready.

“Here’s how it’s going to be,” she says, tone easy. “Gonna ask you all a real simple question, and I expect to get an honest answer. Sound good?”

No one says anything; Cara smiles.

“Good. Now. Anyone seen a cute green toddler waddling around?”

A few antennae waver in the air, but it’s one of the offworlders nearly at her feet that answer. “Er, yeah,” he says, sounding far too young to be starting shit like this in the middle of the afternoon. “It was weird? When we came in uh, couple days ago, wasn’t it?”

He looks to his buddy, then the other, but both of them are still frozen, staring at Cara.

Gulping, her new informant continues: “I-- I thought I saw something like that up on the roof? It was looking down through the sign. Behind the H, I think?”

The kriffing _roof_.

Cara doesn’t roll her eyes, but just barely. She thumbs the strap back into place, electromag _snicking_ neatly. Scoops her pack back up and then, before she can quite finish making the pivot, offers the rest of her patot panak to the offworlder who’d answered her question.

“Thanks,” she says. “Good luck not dying.”

He gulps, eyes wide in his scared face, and drops the patot panak on his crotch.

“Better that than the blaster,” Cara winks.

She leaves, back into the nearly empty street. As the door cycles shut behind her the sounds of yelling start up again, followed on its heels by more poorly aimed bolts of plasma. A quick survey shows her a maintenance ladder leading up the side of the cantina, which she quickly scales.

“Don’t throw flames at me,” she hollers, hesitating three rungs from the top, safely out of sight. “My hair doesn’t need to get any shorter.”

A long silence.

Cara waits, counting the seconds until she finally hears something. The scrape of a boot. 

She tries again: “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already, Mandalorian!”

Now might be the time to use his name. He can’t have given it out to many people, not with the way he’d acted back in the barn. She could say it now, say _Dyn, it’s me! Hold your kriffing fire, would you?_ but then again, maybe not. It’d be cheap to use it here, she thinks, like playing a trick card. She might win the pot, sure, but she might also get knifed on principle. 

He didn’t give it to her so that it could be used as leverage, after all.

She holds her tongue.

“Cara _Dune_ ,” comes the Mandalorian’s voice only seconds later, equal parts irritated and surprised. Something shivers inside her to hear him, a familiarity nearly gone strange. She rests her head on the rung of the ladder, just breathing. “What are you-- Is that really you, Dune?”

“Yep. The one and only,” she jokes, and finally risks clearance. 

The roof of Grath’s Cantina is a pretty decent hidey hole. The signage up front juts high into the air, creating a protective barrier, and the roof itself is enclosed on all four sides by a meter of solid steel paneling. It creates a decent enough lip that even a trouble-seeking alien baby can’t tumble his way down to the ground without assistance.

There’s a moment where she’s almost afraid to set her eyes on him. She’s been chasing the two of them so intently, with a single minded, violent focus, that finally getting here, finally catching up to them, seems far too big a thing to deal with easily. 

But Cara looks, because she can’t not. Has to. It almost feels like a compulsion, as necessary as breathing or eating, intrinsic to her survival. She looks, and she finds the Mandalorian leaned up against the back of the signage, looking just as she’d last seen him -- decked out in Beskar, bristling with weapons, and armed with the cutest kid the galaxy over. He’s seated on the ground with one leg bent, the other extended, and his kid fast asleep against his chest plating. 

Cara won’t lie: it all makes for a pretty picture.

Of course, that pulse rifle of his happens to be oh-so-casually balanced on his bent knee, aimed straight at Cara’s face. 

Horribly, that doesn’t make her like the view any less. It might actually make her like it more.

“Hey,” Cara says, only a little sarcastic. “You miss me?”

“ _No_.”

Cara laughs, because even distorted by helmet and electronics, she can hear the lie in his voice.

With a heave, she’s up and over, feet idly taking her in a slow circuit around the perimeter, giving the Mandalorian time to adjust to her presence. The pulse rifle twitches, following her trajectory; tension ribbons its way up her spine. She likes the Mandalorian; thinks he likes her. That doesn’t always mean much for people like them, though. This is a risk.

But then, it was always going to be, wasn’t it?

She looks out at the Vorzydiak town, dreary and orderly, giving him the shot if he wants to take it. Her heart pounds. She tastes adrenaline on the back of her tongue and swallows it down. Says, when his finger doesn’t squeeze on the trigger: “I’m not a bounty hunter, you know. I don’t have your puck.”

“And that’s the only business interested in retrieval, is it?”

That dry tone puts a smile on her face. She risks a glance at him, lets him see the wry curve of her mouth. “Nah, but I’m retired, remember? No one’s the boss of me but myself, these days.”

“...I _just_ hired you.”

“For that shitty pay? Please, I did you a favor.”

“Then give me back my money.”

“Fuck no,” Cara laughs. 

She can’t tell if the banter has calmed him any, but her feet are still bringing her closer, steady and deliberate. The pulse rifle twitches again, away and then back on her, waiting. This far out in the system the Vorzyd star is little more than a faint warmth on her skin, burning down through thin clouds. A breeze blows in, tickling the hair against the nape of her neck.

Eventually, she’s near enough to see the tip of one green ear peeking out from the swaddle of dirty robes huddled on the Mandalorian’s chest, precariously balanced. Their voices haven’t woken the kid, nor has the tension.

Cara finally stops prowling, close enough to see the new scuff marks on the Mandalorian’s Beskar, the way his arm trembles, just slightly, where it holds the rifle steady. Her eyes stray back to the kid. She asks, “He doing okay?”

And damn it, she hadn’t meant for her voice to do what it just did: get soft. 

But apparently that’s what the little guy brings out in her, some previously hidden field of tenderness, ripe for the harvest. She clears her throat of any lingering vulnerability, yanks her gaze back up to settle on the silver-and-black wariness of the Mandalorian’s helmet. His invisible stare.

And he must be staring at her, because he tilts his head just a little, as if considering her or the question, maybe how best to answer it, either with a shot fired or words offered. 

“Yeah,” is what he says, and his voice has gone as soft as hers. “Yeah, Dune. He’s just fine.”

She breathes a sigh of relief, not even bothering to hide it; she hadn’t even known she’d been worried that the little guy might not be, not until now, when she’s suddenly not. 

“Great,” she says, and now she jerks her chin at the pulse rifle, whose steady aim on her chest is finally starting to irritate her. “So. You gonna stow that bad boy away, then? ‘Cause as much as I love a good standoff, you keep this up much longer and I’m going to get all excited.”

“...Excited?”

“Oh, yeah. _Excited_. I’ll either want to fight or fuck,” Cara grins, just to be a shit.

The pulse rifle twitches _hard_ , wavering in the air before the Mandalorian huffs an annoyed sigh and settles it on the ground next to him. “Are all vets this crude?”

Cara lifts her hand, flat in the air, and rocks it back and forth in a so-so gesture. 

“Probably just you,” he huffs again, but this time it’s nearly a laugh, though a tired one. “What are you doing here?”

“Big galaxy,” she says, and takes the unspoken invitation to sit next to him. She’s not proud of the effort it takes to get down, but it’s been a long journey getting here. She lost track of how many parsecs they’ve traversed, but she’s currently feeling every one of them. When she settles, that stupid, shiny helmet is angled her way, somehow communcating just fine without mobile features the Mandalorian’s appreciation for her lackluster explanation.

She tries, “Coincidences happen?”

“They do,” he agrees. “But I don’t think this is one of them.”

Sighing, Cara digs the tracking fob out from where she’d stowed it before entering the cantina, in the main cavity of her pack. There are other odds and ends in there: a change of clothes, a couple of knives, a half-eaten pack of ration bars. She tries not to notice the Mandalorian’s interest in what else might be hidden inside, closing it up tight once the fob’s in her hand.

“Here,” she offers, tossing it to him.

Now that he doesn’t have a weapon pointed at her, he’s got one arm tucked under the kid, supporting him. It’s damn near upsetting, seeing them like that, even in such a strange locale as this. Cute seems too tame a word for it, what with the little guy all tuckered out and possibly drooling on some of the most impressive steel Cara’s ever set eyes on.

The Mandalorian catches the fob with his free hand, examining it. “You pick this up off another bounty hunter?”

“Nah,” Cara drawls. “Omera fixed it and sent me on my way.”

“Sent you…?”

“That’s right,” Cara agrees with a cheer she doesn’t feel, still a little bitter and mean about how long he kept that damned rifle poised. “Your hot widow sent me to keep an eye on you two. Guess you’re stuck with me now.”

He makes a scoffing sound, but it goes a little funny midway through, staring at the fob with more intensity than it warrants. Cara can only see the profile of his helmet, but she can imagine his cheeks heating up under that tincan, thinking about the woman he left behind and the kindness that she extended, even after he was gone. All that goodness shining through. 

Cara tries not to grimace.

“You shouldn’t have followed us,” the Mandalorian says, so low she almost doesn’t hear it.

“That’s some gratitude. How are you going to tell Omera no, hm?”

“I don’t need to,” the Mandalorian mutters. “I can say it easily enough to _you_ , Dune.”

Cara snorts, reluctantly amused. “And I’m sure I’ll listen when you do. But for now, how about you tell me what brought you all the way out _here_.”

She thinks she might have him, now, or nearly. There’s something about the set of his shoulders that seems more weighed down. Weary. Being a parent and a loner out in the wilds of space can do that to you, Cara imagines. And with the new marks on his armor, that fleeting tremble in his normally steady arm, he looks like he needs a strong shoulder to lean against, or maybe nap on. 

Good thing Cara has two.

“You’re a pain,” the Mandalorian complains, effectively folding. “But while you’re here--”

Suddenly, Cara has a child on _her_ chest, a warm, fragile weight where there’s never been anything of its like before. She has to crane her neck awkwardly, tucking in her chin, to look down at him. All she sees peeking out of those dirty folds is a hairy green head and a tiny, button nose. He’s still sound asleep, breathing slowly against her, and before Cara can figure out how to protest that she doesn’t know how to _do_ this, the Mandalorian is reaching out and wrapping gloved hands about her forearms, tugging until he’s got them situated how he wants them, cradled beneath the kid.

“The fuck,” Cara whispers.

All that time in the village and Cara never once actually held the kid. Never felt equipped to, worried she’d hurt him, awkward about wanting to do it at all. Younglings aren’t really her thing. It was just a silly, secret, occasional longing in the pit of her stomach, to scoop the kid up and pull him near, held within her own strength where she might protect him, keep him safe.

Now that it’s happening, though, she’s not at all certain how to feel. 

“Huh. Never seen you look scared before.”

Cara bares her teeth automatically, bristling internally. But she doesn’t look away from the tiny bundle in her arms. “Don’t think I won’t throw you off this roof, Mandalorian. Kid’s gonna wake up and wander off at some point. I can take revenge.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says.

When he gets up, he stretches in a way that makes Cara suspect he hasn’t moved in hours. And when he steps away he leaves his pulse rifle next to her. She tracks him in her peripheral as he slips off the roof, hesitating at the top rung of the ladder. 

“Don’t go anywhere,” he says.

Cara doesn’t admit that she doubts she could bring herself to move even if an entire platoon of Storm Troopers were marching down on her. She just says, “Get me a drink while you’re down there, would you?”

He doesn’t reply, which isn’t a yes, but certainly isn’t a no, either.

And then it’s just-- her. Cara. Here on a roof of some cantina in a system she’d never even heard the name of before last week, holding an alien toddler in her arms as he begins to drool on her. It’s been too long since she bathed, and she lied to the Mandalorian earlier: her hair needs a definite trim, grown shaggy during her travels. Her feet ache, but not nearly as much as her heart is aching in this moment.

“Hey,” she says, voice so lush with tenderness that it’s foreign to her own ears. “Hey, little guy. I missed you.”

He stays sleeping, but that’s fine. Cara’s not sure she could have handled it if he blinked those big, bright eyes at her, or gave a little inquisitive trill. She needs a moment, maybe ten, to figure out how to wrestle these still strange emotions back into her chest, beneath her ribs, tucked away where they belong.

It only takes her three to realize that the Mandalorian never gave her back the tracking fob.

“ _Damn_ it,” she groans.

\---

When the Mandalorian returns, he does _not_ have a drink for her. All he seems to have is attitude as he deliberately tries looming over her, arms crossed, voice censured.

“ _What_ did you do?”

Cara squints up at him, the distant sun at just the right angle that its lancing through the clouds and right into her eyes. The Mandalorian is a dark shape against all that brightness, visually striking. But Cara finally feels comfortable enough with her sleeping charge that she can shift around a little without immediately panicking that she’ll drop him, so she rolls her shoulders in a shrug, entirely unimpressed with the grandstanding. 

Well, _mostly_ unimpressed. 

“Me?” she asks. “I didn’t do anything.”

“That cantina’s a mess.”

“Yeah,” agrees Cara. “It was when I arrived, too. Some offworlders shooting it out with a local, looked like. I just stopped in to see if anyone knew where to find _you_. Which, hey. Probably want to think about moving on from here. Little guy got spotted a couple days back.”

The Mandalorian curses, looking away sharply. 

Again, Cara can’t help but notice the weary drag of his shoulders, how sullen exhaustion seems to shroud him. Doesn’t much like the way it makes her heart twist. She thinks about her own half assed plans to drag these two off to his ship, put it in locked orbit, and get some sleep. Wonders why he hasn’t done the same when it looks like he badly needs it.

He won’t thank her for bringing that up, though. She deflects. “You find what you were looking for, at least?”

“What?”

Cara tilts her head, indicating the cantina below. “Whatever you left to do. Get it done?”

“...Yes.”

His shoulders are up a little, helmet tipped down. That’s his awkward stance, the one he gets when he’s feeling verbally backed into a corner, or whenever Cara says something especially crude, just to watch him try not to squirm. Cara squints at him, considers the options. The one she picks makes her bite at her lip immediately, trying not to laugh.

“ _What_ ,” he practically snarls.

“Did you…” it’s a losing battle, no matter the answer. Laughter’s coming, and Cara can’t find it in herself to mind. “Please, _please_ tell me. Did you seriously leave me alone with the kid so you could go take a piss in some backroom?”

The Mandalorian glowers out at the horizon, ignoring her.

She’s officially lost the battle, laughter spilling out deep and helpless from her belly, and it’s probably going to wake the kid up but she can’t make herself stop. “Are you kriffing _serious_? You could’ve taken a piss off the side of the roof!”

_Now_ he’s looking at her. Still glowering, Cara thinks, his hands shifting restlessly where they grip his biceps, arms still folded over all that Beskar steel. Like he’s longing for a weapon to shut her up with and barely restraining the urge. He mutters, “Not all of us are crude, Dune.”

“This is amazing,” she gasps. 

“I think I might hate you,” the Mandalorian replies.

\---

Since they can’t keep camping out atop Grath’s Cantina, they don’t linger for long, planning instead to make their way further into town, looking for a cheap place to lay their heads for a night. Cara loiters just long enough to see three bodies lined up on the cantina’s porch; the offworlders, all dead. “What a waste of food,” she murmurs, frowning.

“Dune?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, hurrying to keep pace with the Mandalorian. Until she gets that fob back she can’t risk letting them out of her sight. “Now, tell me again what you’re doing on Vorzyd V?”

“I never told you in the first place.”

“I noticed that,” Cara points out, just as sarcastically. “Tell me and I’ll stop asking.”

“Is _that_ how it works.”

Was he always this sassy? Cara thinks so, mostly because she definitely likes it. Even with all his shining goodness, she can’t imagine being so twisted up over a near-stranger who wasn’t at least a little bit of a dick. More fun that way. She’d jostle him with her elbow if he wasn’t still holding onto the kid.

“Hey,” she says, realizing that the little guy is still sleeping, despite all the jostling _and_ the banter. “Is he really okay? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him sleep this much.”

Tension seeps into the air between them, but the Mandalorian only hesitates a beat before admitting, “Once. It’s happened once before. He’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“ _Yes_.”

“All right,” she says, brows high. “Just checking. You were telling me about being on Vorzyd V…”

He groans.

“Trust me,” she grins, with a bit of wicked mirth. “I can keep this up all night.”

She really could, she thinks. It’s not anything that she’s ever had to try before, either not caring enough to get answers or resorting to her fists to do the coaxing. But she won’t hurt the Mandalorian, not like that, and-- well. 

Obviously she cares enough, or she wouldn’t be here, would she?

It’s still such a strange concept to her.

Thankfully, he capitulates before she has to think too hard about it, or put any of this newfound enthusiasm to the test. “Fine. _Fine_. Let’s just-- get a room. _Then_ I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” 

“I’ll hold you to that,” she murmurs.

He makes an abrupt turn down a narrow alley that spits them onto another, near identical street. But his helmeted head turns unerringly in the direction of what looks, promisingly, like a hotel. The promise of rest and privacy makes Cara feel ravenous, hunger gnawing at her in a way that has nothing to do with food. And she does her best not to think about getting the Mandalorian into a locked room, crowding him onto a bed, but it’s a definite challenge. 

He’s all jagged lines and jittering steel right now, irritation and exhaustion breaking any stoicism he tries to wear. Cara wants to strip the rest of it from him, find all the raw, aching places of his existence and dig in until he can’t take it anymore.

“Looks good,” she says, clearing her throat. “I need a shower.”

A cold one, preferably.

“So do I,” the Mandalorian sighs. He seems to droop a moment beneath the weight of the kid, the pulse rifle on his back, all that armor he dons. Cara’s hands twitch at her sides, but then he’s straightening, leading the way once more. 

“Don’t think this gets you out of talking,” she calls at his retreating figure.

He makes a rude gesture over his shoulder with the hand not currently holding up the kid.

\---

After quick showers and a light lunch sent up to their rooms, Cara learns the details she’s been fishing for. They’re on Vorzyd V because it’s more traditionalist than Vorzyd IV. That means it’s populated mostly by a race of extremely serious, self-contained people, focused on their work and little else. Easy to be ignored, and easy to notice outliers. A hunter after the kid’s bounty can’t hide in plain sight.

“You still managed to set up right above a bar fight,” Cara pointed out, seated in a simple chair at the little table in the Mandalorian’s rented room. 

Her own is right next door, but she’d come over as soon as she thought he might have been finished eating. It made her itch, having him out of her line of sight. But when she’d been asked at the front desk how many, she’d gone ahead and spent the extra creds to get the Mandalorian some privacy. As much as she’s probably going to regret giving it to him, she can’t quite find the grit to force him to stay in that helmet all night, not with how exhausted he keeps proving himself to be. 

Feelings make her stupid, apparently.

Cara’s annoyed about it, but also doing her damnedest not to think too hard about anything at all. For now, she’s tilted back on two spindly legs, feet propped up on the empty table, watching the Mandalorian putter around the room like he’s planning on staying there longer than the bare minimum.

“Big universe,” he mocks.

Cara grins. “Coincidences _will_ happen.”

All this nervous energy isn’t new, but the fact that he can’t force himself to stillness despite it _is_. Cara’s really trying not to think too hard about all this, honest, but the Mandalorian is making it difficult. It’s gone _weird_ between them, she thinks. Stilted, a little forced. Definitely uneasy. Neither of them are much accustomed to company, let alone the familiar kind, and they haven’t Omera and her village to temper them either. Cara’s not sure what to do with all this silence between them, and she’s certain the Mandalorian has no idea.

And then he surprises her by asking: “Are you planning on staying with us?”

“Depends,” she returns, tongue slow, mind racing. “How big is your ship?”

He stops puttering. Stands halfway across the room on the far side of the bed, maddeningly tempting. Cara wants so badly for him to let her stay of his own volition, his own preference for her company, that she feels struck dumb with it, bruised by an unseen blow down deep where the hurt of it can’t be seen.

She gets over it.

“It’s a Razor Crest.” The Mandalorian shrugs. “Big enough for me and the kid and whatever bounties I pick up. Left it at the docks for maintenance while we were in town.”

Cara hums, nodding. “Easy get-away, not putting her in short term storage.”

“And I’m low on funds,” the Mandalorian admits, tipping his empty palms into the air at his sides, as if to showcase it. “I’m not exactly picking up bounties any longer. And the exchange rate for credits is shit.”

“Tell me about it.”

He shakes his head, turns toward the pack he’s already emptied, and stops. Stands there a moment as if uncertain what to do, now that the chore of it is done. Cara could probably help him out: suggest he sit, suggest he nap, suggest he go find them something to eat. But she’s still not that nice a person, and she’s spent far too long chasing after him to stop looking at him just yet, with her chest still tender and sore. 

She waits, instead, for him to decide.

He sits in the chair opposite her, hands folded on the table near her dirty boots.

There’s silence.

Cara lets it linger, counting down the seconds and watching him steadily, waiting for him to break. It doesn’t take long, much to her surprise. Maybe she has him more off kilter than she expected, offering protection, offering company. Maybe Omera wasn’t so wrong in her prophecy after all.

Do you not want to be alone? she thinks, but doesn’t dare say.

The silence lasts for nearly two minutes before the Mandalorian is back up, striding across the room. “Just going to-- Are you hungry?” he asks, voice gone strangely ragged. He doesn’t wait for an answer, tossing out, ”I’ll be right back,” as the door shuts behind him.

Considering the kid is still tuckered out in the middle of the lone bed, Cara counts on it.

\---

Awkward is the word for what’s between them now.

She feels like his name is a tattoo beneath her skin, a beat her heart is forced to move to. Something heavy, wondrous, _terrifying_ with promise. It hangs there between them, along with all those easy stories spun into the sun-soaked world on a lazy afternoon, given weight with their shared voices, because for a moment she and the Mandalorian had lived in a dream of peace, of stillness.

It was easier in the village.

She hadn’t exactly stopped to think about the truth of it, how things might be different next time around. Mostly, she’d been planning to keep her distance, to protect without interacting. But eventually, sure, she’d assumed they’d be in the same room again. 

But without a mission, without a battle and common goal to bind them, people who needed them, what was there between them? Who did they become to each other? Something different, something strange. The Mandalorian, running the galaxy over to protect a nameless kid, no plan, no end in sight, just constant readiness. 

And Cara, choosing to follow.

Neither of them seem to have any idea how to handle that sentiment gracefully.

So it’s not really a surprise that, when the Mandalorian comes back into the room without sustenance of any kind and says, “Apparently there’s a robbery. Want to see if there’s a reward for dealing with it?” all Cara can do is sigh out in heartfelt relief, even if this does mean taking a rain check on getting sleep any time soon.

“Might as well,” she says, grin gone crooked.

They figure the kid will be safest in a locked room with no windows. “If it’s anything like last time,” the Mandalorian murmurs, staring at the shut door with hunched shoulders, reluctant to leave, “then he shouldn’t wake up until tomorrow at the earliest. He’ll be fine.”

“There’s a story there,” Cara decides. 

She isn’t certain she wants to know about it, though, considering how worried about the little guy she already is. But she knows she’ll find it out, eventually. Needs to, because how can she protect these people she’s chosen, these idiots she’s helplessly attached to, if she doesn’t know what dangers might be lying in wait for them? 

Cara’s run from a lot of things, but she won’t run be running from _this_ any time soon.

“Help me stop a robbery and buy me dinner with the reward,” says the Mandalorian, still exhausted, still worn, but still going forward, one stubborn step at a time, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“A dinner you won’t even be able to _eat_ if I’m there.”

He huffs. “That’s the joke, Dune.”

Since he’s not holding the kid any longer, Cara doesn’t feel bad about elbowing him in the side where the Beskar doesn’t reach. He grunts and jostles back, and _this_ , she thinks, this is exactly what they needed to get back in rhythm with each other. The quiet moments will probably come together, given enough time. For now, adrenaline and a common cause can soothe their ragged edges, line up their parts.

“Tell you what,” she says, feeling playful. “Whoever saves the day buys the other dinner, how about that? Whichever of us is the more suitably heroic.”

The Mandalorian hums. “You’re on.”  
  
  


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**Author's Note:**

> thanks again for reading (:


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